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Okay, so recently SWIH was thinking about the "top" heroin cities in the U.S. (Europe as well), and was quite surprised to find that some of the extremely well-known ones have a high concentration of IV heroin users, tons of potent heroin that's easy to procure-but the state laws regarding IV drug use are not only antiquated but blatantly anti-heroin. For example, Newark is known for having a shit ton of pure powder dope, there's a lot of junkies there, and it's very easy to find, but because of state laws regarding harm reduction (or lack thereof), it is illegal to operate a needle exchange in any part New Jersey (I heard this a while ago, and it might have changed by now-I hope so-so if I'm wrong, please correct me!)

In contrast, SWIH's current city has had a large heroin epidemic since the early '80s, and even though Seattle's dope use is nothing compared to Baltimore or some of the big cities on the East Coast, the junkie culture pervades the city, you can score quickly (even on the street) in multiple places, and the furthest dealer is probably less than 3 miles away at most. In addition, there's about seven needle exchanges throughout the city (one of which is volunteer/IV drug user-run, and doesn't so much trade needles, but gives out huge amounts, and will even deliver clean rigs to you, free of charge, if you don't feel like leaving the house-and they give out naloxone kits for OD's, and crack pipes, too, if you like doing that). There's a lot of police around the hot spots, but they don't really care all that much about individual heroin use, just violence/theft associated with it, and dealing. SWIH's met a lot of people that have gotten searched while they were holding, but the cops were too lazy, or just didn't give a shit, to check the obvious places like shoes and jean cuffs, so SWIH's never even heard of someone being arrested for possession in Seattle, just dealing. Basically, the cops know that drug deals are obviously taking place, but some municipal laws prevent them from doing anything worse than requesting that an individual cease loitering. Despite all of these pros, Seattle has one major downside, dope-wise, and that's the quality of it (which, frankly, sucks about 75% of the time. Most of the dope in Seattle is shitty ass black tar heroin, which clogs up your veins horribly and isn't usually that pure. Superior gunpowder heroin CAN be found, but it probably only accounts for about 10% of Seattle's dope, so you do have to look super hard. It's damn near impossible to find powdered H4 here (SWIH's only found it ONCE in a couple of years), and there are very few pharmaceutical opiates for sale on the street, though they can sometimes be obtained.

SWIH's curious if anyone knows of a city/region of the U.S. or U.K. that not only has high-quality dope, but also has laws that are somewhat "heroin-friendly", lots of needle exchanges for junkies, and especially a police force that doesn't make a huuge deal about individuals possessing heroin for personal use, or chooses not to get involved with trying to break up the dope scene?

Anywhere in the tidewater region of Virginia (ex. Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, Hampton, or Virginia Beach) will have large, ready-available amounts of what you call "gunpowder" heroin. There is no tar there. SWIM found some once and wondered what the all hype was about after trying it. On the other hand there are no needle exchange programs that SWIM knows of and it is illegal to purchase rigs at pharmacy's without a good reason/prescription. LOTS of pharmaceuticals in the area. Richmond, Virginia is another heroin capital with the same needle protocol as tidewater.

SWIM doesn't exactly know where the police stand on the heroin users in these areas. He just knows from personal experience that he hasn't known anyone to go to jail for HEROIN, but has seen people go to jail/get charged for the things involved. (ex. DWI, Grand Larceny, Prescription Fraud, Assault, Forgery...ect)

Obviously, the UK is smaller than some US states so we don't have a Federal and State laws here - it's one law for everyone. So you wont find much difference in heroin policy from town to town in the UK.

There might be small differences between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island, but I've never noticed any difference.

In terms of supply, the larger the city, the better the supply. London, Birmingham and Bristol being 3 that immediately spring to mind.

Because the UK is quite a densely populated place, you should never be more than 30 miles from a relatively decent-sized town with a smack supply.

Seattle almost shares walls with Vancouver, so... I'm guessing there's got to be some reasonable H activity going on there.

In Europe, it's easy: either pick any russian city and you'll have a serious candidate or, of course, consider Berlin as one of the top major heroin cities. Ever since the 70's, Berlin has been the capital of heroin in Europe.

What we refer to as "Dirty Jersey" (Newark and the like) has the best supply in the northeast. The law is pretty easy-going for the most part too, if you don't have more then a personal supply and you're not causing problems, you can shoot up in the middle of the street and no one will say two words to you (Do as I say, not as I do though, just because I got away with it, don't mean you will!) I was always told that if you're a doper, the northeast is the place to be.

Obviously, the UK is smaller than some US states so we don't have a Federal and State laws here - it's one law for everyone. So you wont find much difference in heroin policy from town to town in the UK.

There might be small differences between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island, but I've never noticed any difference.

In terms of supply, the larger the city, the better the supply. London, Birmingham and Bristol being 3 that immediately spring to mind.

Because the UK is quite a densely populated place, you should never be more than 30 miles from a relatively decent-sized town with a smack supply.

There is next to no heroin in Northern Ireland.Users, dealers and gear itself is really looked down upon here, by police, the general populous and most importantly, the paramilitaries. They have most of the hard drugs trade locked up, and heroin really doesn't exist over here. Dealers of it get shot or beat, users too. There's a real disdain for it it here, I mean it is about in a few places, but asides from them the mere mention of it gets heckles raised. The Republic might be different, but for most of NI it's rare and expensive. I once read a report that stated that heroin (where it exists here) is 5-10 times the price per gram of mainland UK.

I never touched heroin when I lived in Baltimore but, visiting in spring before quitting and on the hunt for cocaine, I found it a surprisingly easy to find heroin. This was simply via word-of-mouth within a group of friends who don't actually use heroin, themselves. Granted, it wasn't very good, but supposedly if I'd stayed another day, more and better could be obtained. This led me to compare Chicago (where I constantly read about our own "heroin epidemic") to Baltimore and, according to ABC, one in ten Baltimore residents are heroin addicts.

I think it's a good idea to analyze the demographics of the specific city, when considering safety and harm reduction. As for Baltimore, a large population of heroin users in a generally low-income city suggests difficulty obtaining affordable treatment - waiting lists for methadone clinics, filled rehab centers, doctors already at their federally-mandated buprenorphine limit - potentially inability to get a bupe scrip is the sole reason I haven't returned to the "city that reads."

Another problem in many areas is the lack of "Good Samaritan laws," protecting those who call 911 from criminal prosecution when reporting a friend's overdose. I know these have been implemented with great success in at least New Mexico, New York and Washington state (Seattle).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Holly021255

lots of needle exchanges for junkies

Expect a lot less needle-exchanges and, in case anyone hasn't heard, prepare to see red:

Milwaukee it's easy to get if you know the right people. There's at least one needle exchange that I know of, never have had a use for them, went there with a friend once. As for the police, I'm not really sure I haven't really heard of any users getting hassled or anything. Quality is usually pretty good, haven't run across any tar in Milwaukee at all, but haven't really tried.

Obviously, the UK is smaller than some US states so we don't have a Federal and State laws here - it's one law for everyone. So you wont find much difference in heroin policy from town to town in the UK.

There might be small differences between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island, but I've never noticed any difference.

In terms of supply, the larger the city, the better the supply. London, Birmingham and Bristol being 3 that immediately spring to mind.

Because the UK is quite a densely populated place, you should never be more than 30 miles from a relatively decent-sized town with a smack supply.

Something that does create inequalities between UK areas is the police attitude and small print towards drugs.

In Oxford a local harm reduction agency printed their details on a batch of empty bags that they then handed out on request (to dealers). The idea was that heroin would be sold with the contact details of the people who could help heroin addicts.
When this system of reaching heroin users was tried elsewhere, (in Middlesborough - I think?) the police quickly turned up with some of the printed bags. They had been found on a few users after police raids or searches. The police went on to threaten the harm reduction charity with prosecution for 'having a concern in the supply of class A drugs'.

Middlesborough was running a joint police/local media operation called 'Rat on a rat. Grab a dealer a day!'. It was has retrogressive as it sounds and, as catching ACTUAL dealers can be quite difficult, many of the daily dealers who were caught were simply users who were plagued unmercifully by the local police.
One of the senior policeofficers went into politics immediately after retiring and this media observed sacrifice of drug users and police credability was his way of catapulting himself into the public eye.

He was a well known twat of a man with very little intelligence and all the prejudices that made Northern English police so annacronistic. His political career took off with flying colours as the local electorate leapt at the chance to vote in a right wing reactionary who understood the basic desire to punish anyone that wasn't absolutely conformist....whether the punishment resulted in complete rehabilitation OR guarenteed that potheads became murderers was irrelevant.
The need to punish was the primary concern of the narrow minded, mean spirited and bitter locals.

In Oxford a local harm reduction agency printed their details on a batch of empty bags that they then handed out on request (to dealers). The idea was that heroin would be sold with the contact details of the people who could help heroin addicts.

Aside from bad behavior from local law enforcement, I can't help but commend this particular harm-reduction organization for such a clever strategy! Do you happen to know more about the success of empty-bag program, assuming it wasn't destroyed by unnecessary political intervention?

At first thought (and I know this is a little judgmental) I find it difficult to believe any dealer looking to turn a profit would hand out products in containers suggest rehabilitation, thus risking loss of a customer. Similar to the graphic warnings on cigarette cartons. On second thought, there's always a risk of overdose with heroin, and providing quick access to life-saving information on what to do in a crisis is a brilliant way to save lives. Despite the US government's reaction to harm-reduction measures has been um...skittish, providing dealers with free baggies that offer something as simple as drawings of the recovery position would be so subtle, yet effective. Of course, even suggesting something like that in the US is akin to proposing a law that dogs wear sombreros.

Im scottish and Glasgow is said to be the highest rate of heroin addiction in western Europe.Its all over scotland but in Glasgow the heroin scene is just massive.There is dealers everywhere you could be in any part of the city and it would only be a few minutes to take you to a dealer.In the Glasgow area the heroin is about half the price it is in the rest of the country as there is just so many dealers.In scottish prisons probably about 90% of inmates are addicted to heroin.Its probably easier to buy heroin in scotland than cannabis.In a country of only 5 million people there is 60,00 registered addicts which is over 1% of the population.And there is more who are not in the system as there is a lot of people who dont go to their doctors/drug agencies as SWIM did for about 6yrs before going into treatment.For such a small country we have a heavy heroin problem.

San Fransico California, home of heroin, the cops dont bother the junkies in the parks, they will take you to the morgue if you die, they wont take you to jail, and there are some programs for junkies to obtain money from the government , which they use to buy more dope....

Los Angeles has less tolerance but yet still heroin is sold downtown openly and is used openly, I forget the name of the district but its one of the only places in L.A. where street gangs do not fight for turff, they all chill and set and sell smack...its a big homeless camp

I dont know if its Heroin friendly but supposedly we have the biggest Heroin problem in the country. I cant believe no one even mentioned it. I call it shitcago, or CHICAGO! I guess you can get needles from pharmacys, they have needle exchanges, and Im sure there is and endless supply. Almost everyday you hear something else on the news about heroin. I know we are centrally located and a major hub. Thats all i know thow.

I've never been in the heroin scene, but I know there lots of heroin in Chicago. Everybody knows where it is there, and I wasn't even in the city, just the south suburbs(in Chicago the south suburbs are just an extension of the southside ghetto til you get past Kankakee, save for the patches of farm land)

They got some fucked up laws out there, you kill a gangster the police might not even show up, but he says you sold him some dope they're kicking your door in and you might do life

Here, I never knew alot of people for it, my only good connects are doing fed time, but I know people that could find it if I got back in touch with them, It's mostly BTH, I've heard that around here the BTH is usually better than the white, although I've never seen any myself, other than seeing people using it, and I didn't examine it

In Detroit, heroin is easy to come across...almost as easy as it is to come across crack here. When SWIM and SWIM's boyfriend moved in to SWIM's sister's apartment, we quickly learned that several people in the apartment sold dope. It was not uncommon for SWIM to simply be taking a quick stroll to the station and be solicited by a dope dealer on the way. Dopehouses are everywhere. The dope is pretty good.

Police officers in Detroit will usually not care if you're caught with a little heroin. Detroit cops hold murders, gangs, and big-time crack dealers in priority, and everything else they will often ignore.

However, one you cross 8 mile and leave the city, everything changes abruptly. The suburbs are entirely different; it's hard to come across dope, and if you're caught with it the cops are gonna cook you.

Although Psych0 has been off the Heroin for a few years now, he used to score his Heroin in Rotterdam 2-3 times a week.
Rotterdam has the largest shipping port in the world and has been for a century, if not longer, and partly due to this it has become the largest distribution hub for Heroin in Europe and probaply even the Western-hemisphere, with vast quantities coming in from Afghanistan/Pakistan before re-shipping to harbours across Europe and all along the Atlantic.
With such a large and steady supply of pure, uncut Heroin, it's no surprise Rotterdam is the Heroin capital of Europe and known for having the purest H in the EU.
Even though Rotterdam has the purest and cheapest Heroin, it's still of fair to good qualities in other cities across the Netherlands as well, though the closer to the source (Rotterdam) or to one of the major cities (Rotterdam, Amsterdam & the Hague), the purer and cheaper H you'll find.
Partly because of it's very high purity and low price and partly because the H here is #3 Heroin (the freebase), by far the largest majority (90-95%) of the users smoke it on foil although in the largest cities you'll find the highest pertentages of IV users with users in smaller cities all smoking it instead.

Among Dutch society, the police and even other drug users, Heroin is very much frowned upon and seen as a loser junky drug.
Fortunately the police knows from many years of experience that taking a hard stand against Heroin will not work, and although our very liberal drug and harm reduction policy has steadily been broken down by the Christian and right wing parties that came to power a few years ago, the police generally ignores the goverments proposed "tough on crime" attitude as regards to drugs.
Fresh syringes, needles and other injection supplies can be gotten for free at the mental health clinics that can be found in every major city and who also supply Methadone maintenance treatment or other rehab/detox programs.
Fortunately we don't have any "paraphernelia laws" in the Netherlands, and have decriminalised posession of personal usage amounts.
The police does not actively arrest drug users and in the major cities they usually ignore small time dealers as well and instead focus on major crimes.

There is a relatively small percentage of Heroin users in the Netherlands compared to other countries in Europe or the West, and as mentioned earlier it's very impopular among youths and rather a drug used by 30-40+ year olds.
Also, there's no recreative pharmaceutical opiod usage in the Netherlands as far as anyone knows off, with all the opioids that are used being H & Methadone.
Other than Morphine no one has ever heard of any other opioids and even among long term drug users they are unknown, largely because of the very pure and cheap Heroin that's available and the very tight regulations on controlled pharmaceutical opioids.

In the UK, from personal experiences, I found Liverpool to be swarming with dealers. Never once did I have a problem scoring there. My girlfriend at the time was a Chinese girl, she had a lot of connections in Chinatown for heroin. It seemed that that area in particular was practically packed full with the stuff. It was generally the best quality I would get there too.
I'm based in the South West so now tend to buy from Bath and Bristol. The latter now looking likely to become my main market as the former is becoming a hassle for me.

im from birmingham in uk,,the 2nd biggest city,,,we have a very high immigrant population,,,,never scored off a white persopn ,,all asians,,(pakistanis,,indians),,,ive got 8 dealers numbers in my phone,,,and i dont have to go more than 2 mile to score,,,decent ish gear....its a wash with gear round here,,,get a bout 10 texts a day sayin,,pukka gear,fat bags,.,

Tar, by the time it reaches Seattle is less potent than opium (sorghum, molasses anyone?). Hell, tar's not even that great in Mexico where they fucking make the shit!

Baltimore, Baltimore, Baltimore- anyone tells you different simply got burned. The Bronx (probably the other boroughs, too but can't speak to that with first-hand knowledge) has very standardized high-quality bundles as well and you'll quickly learn through the junkie grapevine which "stamp" has been inadvertently under-cut. I say inadvertently because if you intentionally sell shit that's too pure in NYC you'll be targeted for extinction for your audacity. In fact you can't even sell ANY H on your own unless it's first procured by a friendly local or you can manage to counterfeit someone else's stamp but from an asymmetrical risk standpoint (IE death if found out) it's probably not worth it. Everywhere has good shit now and then but nowhere is consistent like Bmore/NYC/Newark. Philly is no slouch but still not 100% consistent. IMHO only of course. Haven't been all over Europe but Amsterdam is simply a matter of asking a nice homeless man in a certain "walking park", where nice homeless men congregate, to escort you to "the spot". Usually, they only want a balloon of crack for taking you directly to the source. After that you got the hook-up simply by asking if they don't mind if you come back on your own later or tomorrow. Guess what - they don't mind. Haven't been to Portugal but since it's actually legal there I don't see how you could go wrong there either but haven't been so can't confirm.

San Francisco is pretty good, it's really easy to get, good quality (although we only have tar on the west coast). The cops don't mess with you unless you're doing something else illegal. Plus there are needle exchanges galore.